U.S. Pat. No. 3,077,110 issued to Theodore Gold on Feb. 12, 1963 with the title “SYSTEM FOR MONITORING THE TAKE-OFF PERFORMANCE OF AN AIRCRAFT” and is incorporated herein by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 3,077,110 describes a system for monitoring the take-off performance of an aircraft. In particular, it concerns a system for accurately providing a continuous indication of the actual performance of the aircraft during the take-off run for purposes of determining whether the aircraft will become safely airborne within the runway distance available.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,128,445 issued to Norman F. Hosford on Apr. 7, 1964 with the title “AIRCRAFT TAKE-OFF MONITORING” and is incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,128,445 describes aircraft take-off monitoring and relates particularly to methods and means for continuously presenting to aircraft pilots current facts concerning the safety of his take-off attempt.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,015 to Grover issued on Dec. 19, 1978 with the title “Safe take-off indicators”, and is incorporated herein by reference. This patent describes an onboard take-off performance indicator system for an aircraft that includes a ground-engaging wheel which measures distance run during take-off and moves the slider of a selected one of a bank of potentiometers in response thereto. Each potentiometer is wound in accordance with a respective defined speed/distance characteristic. The selection of the potentiometer can be completely manual but is preferably in response to an electrical analogue of a graphical method which takes account of parameters individual to a particular take-off. An indication of expected speed in view of distance run is provided by the potentiometer output by means of an index on the airspeed indicator in the aircraft.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,638,437 to Cleary, et al. issued on Jan. 20, 1987 with the title “Aircraft performance margin indicator”, and is incorporated herein by reference. This patent describes an aircraft performance margin indicator including a display that, during takeoff and landing, informs the pilot of the ability of the aircraft to either stop safely or achieve a safe flying speed before reaching the end of the runway is disclosed. A plurality of dedicated microprocessors, each of which receives pertinent data about the aircraft, the runway and the existing environmental conditions, produce one or more symbol control signals. The symbol control signals control the position of symbols that form part of the display. The display scale is a normalized runway and the display includes an airplane symbol that shows the location of the aircraft as the aircraft moves down the runway. The microprocessor controlled symbols include GO and STOP bugs and a ROTATE bar. The ROTATE bar indicates the last point at which the aircraft can be safely rotated under present FAA regulations. The position of the GO bug indicates the last point at which the application of maximum thrust will result in the aircraft reaching rotation speed (at the ROTATE bar position) and achieve a safe takeoff. The position of the STOP bug indicates the last point at which the application of maximum braking will result in the aircraft stopping before reaching the end of the runway. As long as the bugs remain in front of the airplane symbol, the denoted option (go or stop) remains available. Once the airplane symbol passes a bug, the denoted option is no longer available. Preferably, the microprocessor controlled symbols also include: an engine-out (EO) bug that indicates the last point at which the application of maximum thrust will allow the aircraft to safely takeoff with an inoperative engine; and, a VMC bar indicating the distance needed to stop at the time the aircraft achieves minimum control speed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,022 to Middleton et al. issued on Oct. 4, 1994 with the title “Airplane takeoff and landing performance monitoring system”, and is incorporated herein by reference. This patent describes he invention is a real-time takeoff and landing performance monitoring system for an aircraft which provides a pilot with graphic and metric information to assist in decisions related to achieving rotation speed (VR) within the safe zone of a runway, or stopping the aircraft on the runway after landing or take-off abort. The system processes information in two segments: a pre-takeoff segment and a real-time segment. One-time inputs of ambient conditions and airplane configuration information are used in the pre-takeoff segment to generate scheduled performance data. The real-time segment uses the scheduled performance data, runway length data and transducer measured parameters to monitor the performance of the airplane throughout the takeoff roll. Airplane acceleration and engine performance anomalies are detected and annunciated. A novel and important feature of this segment is that it updates the estimated runway rolling friction coefficient. Airplane performance predictions also reflect changes in head wind occurring as the takeoff roll progresses. The system provides a head-down display and a head-up display. The head-up display is projected onto a partially reflective transparent surface through which the pilot views the runway. By comparing the present performance of the airplane with a continually predicted nominal performance based upon given conditions, performance deficiencies are detected by the system and conveyed to pilot in form of both elemental information and integrated information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,499,025 to Middleton et al, issued on Mar. 12, 1996 as a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,022, and is incorporated herein by reference.
PCT/GB2002/002199 application by Eshelby et al. published as WO2002097764 A2, on Dec. 5, 2002. This application also published as U.S. Pat. No. 7,158,052 to Zammit-Mangion, et al., which issued on Jan. 2, 2007 with the title “Method and system for monitoring the performance of an aircraft during take-off”, and is incorporated herein by reference. This patent describes a system, method and display for monitoring the performance of an aircraft during the take-off maneuver that includes the steps of monitoring the progress of the take-off maneuver by acquiring data representative of the aircraft's motion at a plurality of points during the maneuver, generating a function that best fits the acquired data, and using the generated function to predict future progress of the maneuver.
There remains a need in the art for a total runway safety system.